Burning the bridge - An employee's look back on a prevous job

(TP) Lawrence, Kansas. - How many times have you heard this? Employee starts out at company, pours hundreds of hours into new ideas, implementation and large projects, only to have the company turn its' back on the employee, and ultimately forget about them. Ah, how cruel the business world is. And yet, that is the normal response when employees (read: ex-employees) usually respond to these types of scenarios: it was a business decision.

However, in this case it wasn't. It was a slight, whether intentional or not. I was hired in the late 1990's as a 'web designer,' and put to menial tasks of daily updating for a few hours per morning. Thus began four years of being several titles, and ever expanding work responsibilities. Here's the short list of accomplishments: website viewing went from 1000 to nearly 10,000 per day, two national awards won for design, three complete site overhauls, new inventive ideas promoted and used, online revenue started (previously there was no income from web-based advertisements), the processes were streamlined, time and money saved.

In the last year I was employed, a scant six months before I ultimately left, a special publication was produced. Inside, nearly every department was thanked for their hard work and long hours. I seem to remember coming in every Saturday that year to upload the latest information, creating large slideshows of pictures long after photographers and artists left. Special web editions were created every week, and yet there wasn't one mention of my department (I was the only employee, so I took it very personally).

About this same time, I was approached by the head of the entire operation, to consider moving toward an all automated, no design needed, template and hosting, that a third-party company would handle. Easy, simple, no work needed. I was completely against it, for obvious personal and professional reasons. Yet these warnings went unheeded, and we migrated to the new system. I also learned that this company had a boss who was best friends from the old days with my boss. It was a forgone conclusion, that before my opinion was solicited, this was going to happen. I continued with my work, never grumbling, as professional as I always was.

I left a few months later after taking a job in another state. I left the website in decent hands, a person who I didn't pick, didn't mold, but had no objections to taking over, for in reality, a monkey with mental problems could have done the work. No longer was there a need for design or implementation, just simple cut and paste commands. This person left the position a few months later, however when he was on the way out, they offered him a position, a full-time position. Even when he said he was leaving the town for a city 2 hours away, they told him he could work remotely make extra cash on the side to update when needed. Never was such an offer made to me.

The final nail came earlier this summer. A reunion of sorts, celebrating the hundred years of operation, invitations went out to everyone who had worked at the organization. Obscure people from decades ago were invited. Some people there knew where to find me, as they had 'under the table' asked for my assistance a handful of times. I learned of this reunion roughly three days prior, when invitations had gone out several weeks earlier.

There had only been one web designer before me, and there has only been one since. No one had spent more years there than me. I was the designer, Lead Web Designer, Web Editor, Online Content Manager, during the height of the internet boom. I took that site from the depths of 'who cares about this place' to 'this is how we get information in the 21st century.' I pulled this site into the newest and best, latest possible design implementation. And what do I have to show for it? A coffee mug (won through a contest), a lousy t-shirt (stolen for me, when I was told to pay $9 for one) and a picture book without reference to the hard work and long hours I worked to produce the product.

The company is still moving along. There hasn't been any new web features since I left nearly half a dozen years ago. The newest aspects of the web have long passed this site, and the powers that be in the organization are finally coming to grips with the fact that they made a bad decision in moving toward this third-party hosting and design. Long ago I stopped feeling good about saying, 'I told you so,' because they are in an industry that needs, must, stay at the front of the web revolution, because their days are numbered otherwise. Their bread and butter will be gone in the next decade, probably less. Whereas I am now in a position where my future thinking and research is a bonus, they are crippled, a dinosaur in the modern world.

And so, while I still list my achievements on my resume, consider a choice few acquaintances and friends and still value many of the memories obtained through my work therein, I will no longer visit the website, nor care to hear about the demise since I left and pitifully shake my head at management gone bad and old. That's exactly what it is: management gone bad and management gone old.